The government\u2019s Equality Bill has been condemned as \u201csocialism in one clause\u201d by Britain\u2019s right wing and a \u201clandmark\u201d in overcoming inequalities by the liberal media and the trade unions.<\/p>\n
It is neither. Far from promoting equality in any meaningful sense, the bill continues Labour\u2019s reactionary advocacy of identity politics as political window dressing for the growth of class inequality under its rule.<\/p>\n
The government claims that its aim is to \u201charmonise\u201d existing equality laws so as to provide \u201cstraightforward practical guidance for employers, service providers and public bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the bill is not simply a consolidation of current legislation. It marks a further step towards the adoption of affirmative action measures, or \u201cpositive discrimination\u201d as it is known in the UK, which, especially under conditions of a global economic recession, has the most divisive implications.<\/p>\n
Most indicative of the bill\u2019s true purpose is the fact that the review body responsible for drawing together various proposals complained that traditional approaches to resolving inequality were \u201cnot fit…in today\u2019s Britain\u201d due to their focus on \u201cincome or wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Launching the bill, Labour\u2019s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, claimed that it chimed with the new mood created by the economic recession. \u201cThe whole issue of fairness has come centre stage,\u201d she said. Presenting Labour as the party of equality, she continued, \u201cWe know that inequality is grounded not just in gender, race, disability, age and sexual orientation, but also by class.\u201d<\/p>\n
This reluctant acknowledgement of class inequality has indeed been forced on the government. But its reduction to just one of many other forms of discrimination is integral to the politics of affirmative action, which aims to conceal the fact that class is the fundamental source of inequality under capitalism.<\/p>\n
To recognise this is not to minimise sexual or racial inequalities and the persistence of discrimination. It is a matter of record that unemployment and low pay remain higher amongst women, certain ethnic minorities and disabled people.<\/p>\n
Overcoming this, however, requires a political struggle aimed at abolishing the root cause of social inequality\u2013the profit system and the forms of social organisation based upon it.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s proposals are in opposition to this perspective. So determined is it not to infringe on big business that its \u201cequality\u201d measures will apply only to the public sector, after they were vetoed by private employers.<\/p>\n
The bill proposes to \u201cexpand the way positive action\u201d can be used so that employers can select someone for a job from \u201can underrepresented group.\u201d It suggests that decisions on the awarding of public contracts, worth a total of \u00a3175 billion, should take into account a company\u2019s \u201cequality\u201d record.<\/p>\n
The government denies this amounts to positive discrimination, \u201cwhich will remain unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n
This assurance is absurd, given that the stated aim of the new measures is to increase the number of women, in particular, in certain workplaces, by privileging them over other applicants.<\/p>\n
Harman has stated explicitly that the bill is \u201cabout saying \u2018because you are a woman I\u2019m going to put you in this promotion,\u2019\u201d claiming that it would make City of London boardrooms, as well as the Houses of Parliament and the upper echelons of the police, more \u201crepresentative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her statement underscores that the new measures have nothing to do with the interests of working people. The government hopes through its legislation to provide discredited and hated institutions with some veneer of political credibility. But the gender, race and\/or sexual orientation of the owners and representatives of the capitalist profit system make not one iota of difference to those they exploit, as is proven by the experience of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and now Barack Obama in the United States.<\/p>\n
More fundamentally, \u201cpositive action\u201d is based on the premise that there is no possibility of expanding limited resources or producing any fundamental change in the social set-up. Rather, in order for some sections of the population to progress, others must go without.<\/p>\n
This policy has a long and wholly regressive pedigree. It was first systematically promoted in the United States under the Republican administration of Richard Nixon in response to the civil rights movement and the inner-city rebellions of the 1960s.<\/p>\n
Through policies of affirmative action the bourgeoisie sought to cultivate a privileged layer of the African-American middle class and utilise it as a social and political bulwark against the working class. The result has been that while the likes of Obama, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell have \u201cmade it\u201d into the ruling upper echelons, the conditions of minority workers and youth\u2013like those of the working class as a whole\u2013have deteriorated.<\/p>\n
In Britain, the more cautious advocacy of affirmative action has been intimately connected to the Labour Party\u2019s abandonment of its historic links with the working class and its repudiation of social reforms.<\/p>\n
In the 1980s, caught between popular opposition to the Conservative government of Thatcher and its own adaptation to the right-wing agenda of free market deregulation, the Labour Party\u2013especially its nominal \u201cleft\u201d wing\u2013embraced identity politics.<\/p>\n
Increasingly, social policy became determined by race, gender and sexual orientation. Not only was this, in effect, a form of means-testing resources, politically it served to undermine working class unity against the assault on social services, welfare and democratic rights. <\/p>\n
Some quarter of a century on, the share of total household income held by the top fifth of the population has risen from 36 to 42 percent, while falling amongst the bottom 60 percent of the population, declining from 10 percent in the poorest fifth to approximately seven percent. The share of gross domestic product (GDP) going to wages and salaries has fallen over approximately the same period, from 65 percent to 53 percent in 2008.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Labour\u2019s neo-colonialist agenda, coupled with its \u201cwar on terror\u201d and anti-immigrant demagogy, has led to an increase in the harassment of minorities, while the squeeze on public spending has meant an absence of well-resourced, inexpensive child care facilities, further trapping many mothers in low paid employment.<\/p>\n
More damagingly, Labour\u2019s policies of \u201cpositive action\u201d have exacerbated divisions\u2013segregating neighbourhoods and forcing working people into an internecine struggle for a dwindling number of jobs, educational opportunities and public services.<\/p>\n
This, in turn, has played into the hands of the right wing, whose condemnation of \u201cpolitical correctness gone mad\u201d has been used to divert from the truly spectacular special privileges afforded a tiny and fabulously wealthy elite.<\/p>\n
The fight for genuine equality, including the defence of democratic rights against all forms of discrimination, cannot be separated from a political struggle against the capitalist system. Only the abolition of class domination and the reorganisation of economic, social and political life in the interests of the vast majority can provide the basis for a truly egalitarian society.<\/p>\n